Robert Brasillach

Robert Brasillach (31 March 1909 – 6 February 1945) was a French author and journalist.

He was the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which advocated fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot.

Robert Brasillach was born in Perpignan on 31 March 1909, the son of Lieutenant Arthémile Brasillach, who served in the colonial regiment of Marshall Lyautey in Morocco, and Marguerite Brasillach, née Redo.

He studied at the École normale supérieure, at the time a school of the University of Paris, and then became a novelist and literary critic for the Action française of Charles Maurras.

After the 6 February 1934 crisis in the Place de la Concorde, Brasillach openly supported fascism.

His politics are shared by several of the protagonists in his literary works, notably the two male main characters in The Seven Colours (see below).

Brasillach wrote both fiction and non-fiction.

While his fiction dealt with love, life and politics in his era, his non-fiction dealt with a great variety of themes, ranging from drama, great literary figures and contemporary world events.

His work in the realm of cinema history (see below) was particularly influential.

Brasillach was fascinated by the cinema and in 1935 co-wrote a detailed critical history of that medium, Histoire du cinéma (re-edited in 1943), with his brother-in-law, Maurice Bardèche.

A soldier in 1940, Brasillach was captured by the Germans and held prisoner for several months after the fall of France.

At his trial, the prosecution alleged that his release was due to pro-German articles written while in captivity.

He was freed in early 1941 and returned to his editorial role at Je suis partout.

He wrote in favour of the Vichy regime but later embraced a more committed germanophile policy of collaboration and Nazi policies and began to criticize the Vichy state.

He joined a group of French authors and artists in a trip to meet with German counterparts in Weimar and in November 1942 he supported the German militarisation of the unoccupied zone (Case Anton) under the Vichy government because it "reunited France".

Unlike several other authors and critics of the time, Brasillach did not see cinema through an overtly political lens, although the 1943 edition of his work did contain anti-Semitic comments not present in the original.

Despite being fervent nationalists and personally believing that each nation and people had a unique cinema, the authors instead focused on international trends rather than local particularities.

Brasillach frequented Henri Langlois' Cercle du cinéma (Cinema Circle).

His personal tastes are detailed in his writings of the period.

These tastes ranged from Soviet cinema (Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevski ) to film-makers Charlie Chaplin, G.W. Pabst, René Clair and Jean Renoir and to some Hollywood films from directors such as John Ford, Frank Borzage and King Vidor.

Brasillach was drawn to originality and explored foreign cinema, and became the first major critic in France to address Japanese cinema, the work of Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and Heinosuke Gosho.

While in prison, he worked on a third edition of his work on cinema and began to adapt a work on Falstaff which he hoped to film with Raimu.

He became an editor of Je suis partout, a fascist paper founded by dissidents from the Action Française and led by Pierre Gaxotte.

Brasillach was attracted to the fascistic Rexist movement in Belgium, and wrote an article and later a book about the leader of the movement, Leon Degrelle.

Brasillach admired what he perceived to be Degrelle's youth and charisma and Degrelle's insistence on being neither left nor right, supporting striking workers, encouraging love of God, the King and family and desiring to see the establishment of an anti-communist and anti-capitalist, Christian-influenced corporate state.

Degrelle collaborated with the German occupation of Belgium and served in the Waffen-SS.

Brasillach was also greatly impressed by José Antonio Primo de Rivera and his Falangist movement.

By contrast, he described Mein Kampf as a "masterpiece of cretinism" in which Hitler appeared to be "a sort of enraged teacher."

He considered himself a "moderate" antisemite and was replaced as editor of Je suis partout in 1943 by the even more extreme Pierre-Antoine Cousteau.

He was a member of the Groupe Collaboration, an initiative that encouraged close cultural ties between France and Germany.

He worked for various journals, including Révolution nationale and le Petit Parisien.

After the liberation of Paris, Brasillach hid in an attic, joking in his diary: "Jews have been living in cupboards for four years, why not imitate them?".

He surrendered on 14 September when he heard that his mother had been arrested.

He spent the next five months in prison and continued his literary endeavours while incarcerated.

After the liberation of France in 1944, he was executed following a trial and Charles de Gaulle's express refusal to grant him a pardon.

Brasillach was executed for advocating collaborationism, denunciation and incitement to murder.

The execution remains a subject of some controversy, because Brasillach was executed for "intellectual crimes", rather than military or political actions.

He visited the site of the Katyn massacre, toured the Eastern Front, visited Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism and wrote, on his return to France, that he had gone from embracing a collaboration due to reason and rationality to being a collaborator for reasons of the heart ("De collaborationiste de raison, je suis devenu collaborationiste de coeur.") He published the names and addresses of Jews who had gone into hiding, called for the death of left-wing politicians, and in the summer of 1944 signed the call for the summary execution of all members of the French Resistance.

Brasillach was tried in Paris on 19 January 1945.

This work remained the "most prominent aesthetic history of film for at least a decade", and a work that exerted considerable influence, via its impact on Georges Sadoul (who nonetheless disliked the authors) until the 1970s.